help

Hi everyone,
I'm Mohammed Khan from India.I'm currently pursuing my
bachelor's degree in Computer Science Domain and hopefully will be
out in the wild by 2010.Apart from been a decent programmer i also
have had very strong likening towards Art,design and human
psychology.I always wondered if i could ever find myself a profession
that would have all the creative juice.Today i am very confident that
i wish to make my mark in the IxD,UI discipline.

At our company we are developing a new harbour information system.
The graphical user interface and interaction is very different from
the previous software which has been used for about 10 years.

Part of the project is to create a user guide 'new style' for our
users. We don't want to create a 200 pages document with lots of
screenshots and nobody reads. We are also thinking how to integrate
help / user support in the application itself. The guide(s) have to
been supporting, informative and attractive to read.

My name is Matt and I am the creator of the fivesecondtest.com
website. Last month we rolled out http://beta.fivesecondtest.com and
we have since been actively making improvements based on user
feedback.

I am hoping to get some feedback from the greater UX community that
will help us make the service all the more useful. The beta is
currently invite only, so please let me know in the comments if you
would be interested in helping us out and I can set up accounts for
you.

Web site user assistance that consistently exceeds customers
expectations can catapult your company to legendary status and create
brand equity you can measure in billions of dollars. However, making
Help a strategic asset for your company is an arduous task. To shed
light on this important topic, I have teamed up with Tricia Clement,
a renowned cognitive psychologist and Web site user assistance
expert.

HCI grad student here. As my fellow students and I near graduation
and explore all the different kinds of opportunities out there, it
would be extremely helpful to learn about your entry-level
interaction design experience.

What was your first ID job? Generally speaking, is there anything
you would have liked to be different? Which experiences were most
beneficial in the long-term?

Desktop applications currently and over the years have taken many
approaches to teaching or guiding users within the software. It seems
as if software help system trends come and go. Many discussions I've
had end up being similar to a Friar's Club Roast of Clippy :-).

01 First time use
Many applications which don't map perfectly to a well known schema
such as Word or Email may require a small initial learning curve.
Once users get over this initial 'hump" they have an understanding
and comfort with the tools. The component needs an opt-out.